Page 78 of A Sword of Ice
Shula shifted her wait from foot to foot. “The humans always seemed focused on teaching the Fae out of us. They taught us to read and write in the common tongue, they taught us about their gods, and they fed us a false version of history in which the Fae were the monsters.” Her expression became sad. “The only reason I never believed the stories or fell into that trap was because my parents whispered the truth to me at night when no one else could hear.
“They claimed discord had already been happening between the human lands and the Feylands, and a soldier didn’t rise until the war was already well underway. They said he rallied every human kingdom of Illyk to march against Tir na Faie and when he successfully conquered, they crowned him Emperor of Illyk.”
“What else was said about him?”
“Only that he was from Orknie originally. There was never really a lot of information on him as a person or what year he rose up.”
“Exactly!” Iona snapped her fingers at Shula’s words. “Just think about it for a moment!” Iona gestured in Uric’s direction. “No information on who he is, but he’s from Orknie. Before the war, humans and Fae migrated between the Ley Line all the time. He could easily be Fae. If you can’t believe that, then maybe you can believe this: what were some of the first laws he passed? He rounded up the Fae into reservations and who were the first he took?”
Shula’s eyes widened. “Fae with powers.”
“And why is that?”
“To put them in his camps and kill them?” Clay supplied, scratching at his blond mane.
“Not kill them. Experiment on them.” Something in her heart clenched painfully as her past tried to assault her. Screams and ashwood and bloody drag marks in the sand…
Her fingers worked in a frantic rhythm against her thighs once again.
She closed her eyes and swallowed the rising lump in her throat, loosing a breath. When she opened them again, she forced herself to say, “The theories say that he took the Fae with powers to the camps and that’s where they conducted their experiments.”
She knew it sounded far-fetched when it was first heard. When George had first told her, she’d scoffed and laughed in his face. But she’d laid awake for days after in her rented room, staring up at the splinters in her ceiling, running the possibilities of it being the truth in her head over and over again.
The more she thought about it, the more sense it had made.
“Why would he experiment on the Fae?” Clay asked the same question she’d gone back to ask George herself.
So she gave him the same answer George had given her.
“To harness their powers somehow. Because he wants them for himself.” She looked at Shula then, staring long and hard as if she could picture the threads of Mana that bound them together. “Why else would he want the Elementals? We are the most powerful Fae in existence, precisely because there is no price to our magic. The Emperor of Illyk wants that for himself.”
“The Seer said—”
“He can wipe us all out. I know. How do you think he plans on doing that? I think he means to do it by absorbing Elemental power. Imagine the catastrophe if one man has the power of six Elementals within himself? It would be devastating.”
Iona waited patiently as they absorbed this information. It had taken her much longer to get used to the idea. That those who had been on that beach with her one-hundred and two years ago had been stolen. Dragged away to camps because of the magic that lived inside their veins.
She’d been one of the lucky ones.
She’d stayed up night after night. Not even sleep would come, and her fingers had cramped from their frantic movements against her single sheet as her mind raced. Migraines had plagued her as her brain tried to absorb the information. As her soul tried to come to terms with everything she’d learned.
About her people and their suffering, and how she’d been helpless to stop it. It was only thanks to Mana she was able to keep a hold of her sanity for so long. At least, until she met the newer Resistance.
Now there was no doubt in her mind things would get better. That there was hope for her people.
Prince Valerio sighed, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, there was a deadly flash ofsomethingbeneath his depths. “You have given me much to think about, and much to report to my father,” he said slowly. “In the meantime, we go on to find rest of the Elementals before the Emperor of Illyk can.”
He started to turn away and Iona felt dumbfounded by his response. That was all he had to say about it? He was their leader, the leader of the Resistance, and she’d just dropped the information that could change the course of the war forever.
“Our people are in those camps!” Iona argued before he could fully turn from her. “As our prince, it is your job to get them out!”
It felt like everything stilled then. Their breaths, the waves, Iona’s heart…
Prince Valerio turned slightly, the slashing lines of his brows cutting over angry eyes. His thin lips were pressed into a firm line and he didn’t speak, even if his body language and eyes did the speaking for him.
He was pissed.
But so was she.
